Padangekspres.net-Soon to reach one billion users, Facebook as a lot of friends. Almost 700 million people are using Facebook worldwide now, with the number set to reach the one billion mark next spring.

The fastest growth is coming out of Brazil, with Facebook picking up another 1.9 million users in May from the South American giant, according to statistics site Social Bakers.

Other fast growing social networking countries include Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico and Argentina. The new additions square neatly with Mark Zuckerberg’s average of roughly 20 million new users each month.

The social networking star has sustained this growth rate since September 2009. Last July, when Facebook reached the 500 million users, Mr Zuckerberg said there was ‘no chance’ the company wouldn’t reach one billion.

‘It is almost a guarantee that it will happen,' he said at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

'It will be interesting to see how it plays out.’

In the first quarter of this year, the site beat usual numbers jumping from 585 million users to more than 665million. This is some 80 million new users in three months.

All the same, the US still holds the number one country spot with over 149million users – almost half its population. Some 19 million of them come from California alone.

Many of the recent Brazilian additions were nabbed from Google’s Orkut, which had been dominating social networking in Brazil. Brazilians have been making up more than half of the users of Facebooks lesser counterpart.